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History of Rohingya Language

RohingyaLanguagewas first written in Arabic script in the year 1650 by Shah Alawal, the great poet of Arakan Kingdom (known as Ruháng) which is now one of the states of Burma (Myanmar). In 1973 Master Sultan revived it with great efforts and received appreciation from many Rohingya scholars. However, due to the reading problems in Arabic version, Molana Hanif and colleagues invented new alphabets in 1983 and solved reading problems significantly and they too got appreciation from scholars. However, complexity of the alphabets and right-to-left orientation make it uneasy to use it in today’s computer, internet media and mobile devices.Click here for other websites. orgo to old website

Therefore, in the year 2000, Eng. Mohammed Siddique Basu came up with an intuitive idea to write Rohingya language using 28 Latin letters only. The new concept makes the writing system amazingly simple yet the speaking and the writing perfectly match to each other in an astonishing degree making it "What you write is what you read or vice versa". So it requires only few minutes of training to read, write and master the language. This new system, known as Rohingyalish, has been recognized by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) on 18th July 2007 (view both pages 1&2). ISO assigned unique computer code as ISO 639-3 “rhg”to the language and listed it among the world languages as shown in www.SIL.org, the ISO authorized website. Moreover, it has been published in the world language book 'Ethnologue' (www.ethnologue.com) in 16th Edition.

Vowels can be categorized into two Soft (shown in green) and Hard (shown in violet). But there are four types of vowel as shown in table 1-4 above, namely Basic, Circular, Extended and Extended circular. The four types of soft vowel sets are; Basic (a-e-i-o-u-ou), Circular (ai-ei-oi-ui), Extended (aa-ee-ii-oo-uu) and Extended Circular (aai-eei-ooi-uui-ooi) as shown in green color above.

Each soft set is accompanied by a stressed set which are; Basic (á-é-í-ó-ú-óu), Circular (ái-éi-ói-úi) and Extended that includes three variations (aá-eé-ií-oó-uú), (áa-ée-íi-óo-úu) and (áá-éé-íí-óó-úú). Also there are Extended Circular that includes two variations (aái-eéi-oói-uúi-oói) and (áai-éei-óoi-úui-óoi).

Basic Vowels:

There are six basic vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ou). Each basic vowel is strictly defined to have only one sound and all six sounds can be found in an English phrase “america on full tour”. The basic vowels can be either soft or hard. The soft vowels (a, e, i, o, u, ou) are pronounced soft and the corresponding hard vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, óu) are pronounced hard (stressed). Please note that in óu, only the 1st char is accented and not both. Examples: bura=bad, burá=old, búra=stained.